100 Fun Facts About Gunsmoke

Which lawman's rival TV Western premiered four days before Gunsmoke?

Wyatt Earp: ABC's The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp beat Gunsmoke to air by four days as television's first Western written for adults, yet Gunsmoke outlasted it by 14 years.

Whose deep voice played Marshal Matt Dillon on the Gunsmoke radio series?

William Conrad voiced the Marshal for nine years, but CBS would not put him on screen: the heavyset actor said he lost the TV part because he didn't look like Gary Cooper.

Who played Marshal Matt Dillon for Gunsmoke's entire television run?

James Arness at first refused the part, afraid a television series would typecast him, until a friend talked him round; he then played Dillon in all 635 episodes.

Which movie star introduced the first Gunsmoke television episode on camera in 1955?

John Wayne came on in full cowboy gear to vouch for the little-known lead, a protégé he had recommended for the part after using him in four of his own films.

Gunsmoke took over as television's top show in 1957 from which series?

I Love Lucy ended its weekly run in May 1957 while still number one; Gunsmoke then held the top spot for four straight seasons, until Wagon Train passed it in 1961-62.

Gunsmoke is set in Dodge City, in which state?

Kansas: the stories unfold in the 1870s, after the Santa Fe railroad arrived in 1872 and turned Dodge City into a booming cattle town.

What was the name of the saloon owned by Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke?

The Long Branch was a real Dodge City saloon, bought in 1878 by Chalkley Beeson and William Harris; it burned down in 1885, and a rebuilt version now serves visitors at the town's Boot Hill Museum.

Who played Chester Goode, Matt Dillon's limping assistant on Gunsmoke, from 1955 to 1964?

Dennis Weaver had no agent and was delivering flowers for $60 a week when a friend told him CBS was casting the series; the part paid $300 an episode.

Who played the scruffy deputy Festus Haggen on Gunsmoke?

Ken Curtis was a smooth big-band singer with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra long before Gunsmoke; Festus was meant to be a one-off guest spot, and he stayed for 11 years.

Which actor played Doc Adams for Gunsmoke's entire television run?

Milburn Stone won a 1968 Emmy as Doc, and he played the part so convincingly that viewers wrote to him asking for real medical advice.

Who played Miss Kitty Russell on television's Gunsmoke?

Amanda Blake quit a year before the show ended, so a new owner, Miss Hannah, ran the saloon through the final season.

Which future movie star played Gunsmoke's blacksmith Quint Asper from 1962 to 1965?

Burt Reynolds left to chase leading roles of his own, feeling there wasn't room for two leading men, yet he later called Gunsmoke the best time of his life.

On Gunsmoke, Buck Taylor's character Newly O'Brien came to Dodge practising what trade before becoming a deputy?

Gunsmith: Newly arrived from the East to mend firearms, went on to study medicine under Doc, and by the 1987 reunion film had become the town's marshal.

Which sitcom did CBS cancel in 1967 to clear room after reversing its decision to drop Gunsmoke?

Gilligan's Island had been promised a fourth season, but CBS chairman William Paley was furious to find his favourite Western cancelled and ordered it back, so the castaways lost their slot.

In a 1953 Time interview, Gunsmoke producer Norman Macdonnell said the radio Kitty was secretly what?

A prostitute, 'plain and simple', he said, though no script spelled it out; he feared a sponsor would make them clean the show up and move Kitty to 'a sweet little ranch' with her parents.

What was Doc Adams's first name on the Gunsmoke television series?

Galen: on radio Doc had been Charles Adams, but the TV series gave him the name of the ancient Greek physician whose teachings guided doctors for centuries.

On radio's Gunsmoke, Doc Adams had changed his name and come west to escape a charge of what?

Murder: radio's Doc was really Dr. Calvin Moore, a darker figure than TV's kindly physician, who in early episodes cheerfully counted on autopsy fees whenever the Marshal shot someone.

The radio voice of Matt Dillon later became a 1970s television star as which detective?

Cannon ran on CBS from 1971 to 1976 and made a star of the actor the network had judged too heavy to play the Marshal on screen; now the detective's bulk was the selling point.

On the Gunsmoke radio series, Chester's ad-libbed surname was what?

Proudfoot was actor Parley Baer's own ad-lib for a character first scripted only as 'Townsman'; television renamed him Chester Goode.

Howard McNear, Doc on the Gunsmoke radio series, later became famous as which Andy Griffith Show character?

Floyd the barber stayed in Mayberry even after the actor's stroke: rather than write him out, the show brought him back and filmed him seated or propped up.

Which Hollywood legend guest-starred in Gunsmoke's 1966 episode 'The Jailer' as a widow who takes Matt and Kitty captive?

Bette Davis plays a matriarch out to hang the Marshal because he sent her husband to the gallows; TV Guide later ranked it among the 100 greatest episodes ever.

Liggett & Myers sponsored Gunsmoke on radio and then television in the 1950s to sell which product?

Cigarettes: the tobacco firm signed on in 1954, but it was not the first sponsor; the show ran for more than a year with none at all and then, briefly, sold Post Toasties cereal.

Gunsmoke's first radio episode, in April 1952, was named after which Old West outlaw?

Billy the Kid gave the first episode its title on 26 April 1952; Miss Kitty was missing, and did not turn up in Dodge until the third broadcast, 'Jaliscoe', two weeks later.

Under what title was Gunsmoke broadcast in the United Kingdom?

Gun Law was the British title, chosen because broadcasters there thought it had a better ring; a daily newspaper comic strip ran under the same name.

Which singing cowboy recorded a vocal version of Gunsmoke's theme?

Tex Ritter, father of actor John Ritter, cut the song for Capitol backed by composer Rex Koury's orchestra; the show itself only ever played the theme without its words.

Chester's actor left Gunsmoke in 1964 and later starred as a New Mexico marshal loose in New York in which series?

McCloud, a deputy marshal from Taos on loan to Manhattan's police, turned the Marshal's limping sidekick into a leading man and, one critic wrote, suddenly a sex symbol.

Which show finally passed Gunsmoke's scripted-episode record in April 2018?

The Simpsons marked its 636th episode with a spoof of the Gunsmoke opening in which baby Maggie outdraws Marshal Dillon in the street.

Which series broke Gunsmoke's season record for a live-action primetime drama in September 2019?

Law & Order: SVU went one season better than Gunsmoke that month; its parent show, Law & Order, had tied the record in 2010 but was cancelled before it could break it.

By one Old West historian's count, how many times was Marshal Matt Dillon shot during Gunsmoke's television run?

56 times, by Marshall Trimble's tally for True West magazine, with eight wounds to the left arm alone; yet the Marshal was back for every one of the show's 635 episodes.

Gunsmoke's Miss Kitty actress and her husband ran an early captive breeding program for which animal?

Cheetahs were bred at her Phoenix compound, among the first ever raised in captivity; she also brought her pet lion, Kemo, to work on the set one day in 1974 and made the newspapers.

Gunsmoke's star was the older brother of which Mission: Impossible actor?

Peter Graves took his stage surname from his mother's side of the family, while his elder brother kept the family name and merely dropped a letter from it.

Why was Gunsmoke's future star ordered off the landing craft first at Anzio in 1944?

To gauge the water's depth: he was picked for his height, 6 feet 7, and it came up to his waist; a leg wound soon afterwards left him in pain on horseback for years.

Before Gunsmoke, its star played the title creature in which 1951 science-fiction film?

The Thing from Another World was the break he needed: after losing film parts for being too tall, he won this one, a towering alien that feeds on blood, because of his height.

Before Gunsmoke, the actor who played Festus sang with which famous Western vocal group?

Sons of the Pioneers had him as a singer from 1949 to 1953; director John Ford, who became his father-in-law, put the group on screen in the cavalry Western Rio Grande.

Gunsmoke's Festus actor grew up at a Colorado jail, where his mother cooked for the inmates, because his father was what?

The county sheriff: Dan Gates ran the Bent County jail in Las Animas, and his son joked that during the Depression people got themselves arrested just to eat his mother's cooking.

Gunsmoke's Festus actor voiced Nutsy the Vulture in which 1973 Disney animated film?

Robin Hood cast him, while Gunsmoke was still on the air, as one of the Sheriff of Nottingham's two vulture guards, so the deputy went on taking orders from a lawman.

Why did Gunsmoke's Chester have a stiff leg?

The producer wanted the sidekick less heroic than the Marshal and kept out of the fights, so the actor, a college decathlete, chose a stiff leg he could keep up in every scene.

Chester's actor starred in which 1971 Spielberg TV movie about a motorist hunted by a truck?

Duel was made for television but did so well that it went on to play in cinemas around the world; Spielberg later praised his star's enthusiasm for doing much of the driving himself.

Doc's actor missed part of Gunsmoke's 1971 season for what reason?

Heart bypass surgery kept him away for several episodes; Pat Hingle filled in as a new town doctor, John Chapman, until he was fit to come back.

Which classic horror role had bartender actor Glenn Strange played three times for Universal?

Boris Karloff coached him personally after hours; he stayed behind the bar for 222 episodes.

Why did CBS add deputy Thad Greenwood to Gunsmoke in 1965?

As backup for a feuding star: the lead was quarrelling with CBS over pay and ownership of the show, and once the dispute was settled the young deputy was phased out.

Fran Ryan, Miss Hannah in Gunsmoke's final season, had earlier played Doris Ziffel on which sitcom?

Green Acres made her the second Doris Ziffel, 'mother' of Arnold the pig, when Barbara Pepper's health failed; she played Hannah again in the 1987 reunion film.

Which 1974 Gunsmoke spin-off followed a hard-drinking junk collector and a young outlaw bound for California's gold fields?

Dirty Sally starred Jeanette Nolan, who had first played the part in a two-part Gunsmoke story; her wagon was pulled by a mule called Worthless, and CBS dropped the show within months.

Where was the 1987 reunion movie Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge filmed?

Alberta doubled for the plains around Dodge, with interiors shot in a Calgary warehouse; in the film a retired Matt, now a trapper, is badly hurt and Kitty comes back to Dodge when she hears the news.

Why was Festus missing from the 1987 Gunsmoke reunion movie?

The actor balked at the salary offer: the film's makers said he asked for twice what Miss Kitty's actress was getting and stayed home when refused, so Newly wore the marshal's badge instead.

The real Dodge City saloon that shared its name with Kitty's was named after a resort town in which state?

New Jersey's genteel seaside resort lent its name to a cattle-town bar: half-owner William Harris chose it after he and Chalkley Beeson bought the saloon in 1878.

How did Gunsmoke's cast learn of its cancellation?

The trade papers: CBS never told the cast it was thinking of cancelling, so there was no farewell episode, and the star said they had all expected another season or two.

The gunman Matt Dillon shoots down in Gunsmoke's opening was Arvo Ojala, whose real Hollywood job was what?

Quick-draw coach: Ojala taught Hollywood's Western stars to handle a gun and designed the metal-lined fast-draw holster they wore, yet every week he was the one who lost to the Marshal.

Which 1993 country hit name-checks Marshal Dillon and Miss Kitty?

Should've Been a Cowboy came to Toby Keith in about twenty minutes after a night out in Dodge City itself, where a friend was turned down for a dance and teased with the title line; it became his first single.

How many seasons did Gunsmoke run on television?

20 seasons: it spent the first 12 on Saturday nights at 10, then moved to Mondays, where a ratings revival kept it on the air until 1975.

How did the real Dodge City honour Gunsmoke in 1959, while the series topped the ratings?

Dodge City renamed a street after it in 1959, turning downtown's Walnut Street into Gunsmoke Street. The series was the country's top-rated program at the time.

Rolf Aurness, son of Gunsmoke's leading man, became a 1970 world champion in which sport?

Surfing was a family pursuit: his father, who kept reporters off the set, rode waves himself in his time away from the cameras.

Which animal named Kemo did the actress who played Gunsmoke's Miss Kitty bring onto the set in 1974?

A lion called Kemo was her pet and lived in an animal compound at her home in Phoenix, where she settled into semiretirement after leaving the series.

Pat Hingle, Dodge City's stand-in doctor on Gunsmoke in 1971, later played which character in four Batman films?

Commissioner Gordon was his part in all four Batman films from 1989 to 1997. On Gunsmoke he was Dr. Chapman, who struggled to win over the town while Doc Adams was away.

Which child actress, later an Oscar winner, tried to tame a killer dog in Gunsmoke's The Predators?

Jodie Foster played Marieanne, who works with her brother to win over a dog that has been killing cattle and sheep. Claude Akins guest-starred as a gunman bent on revenge.

Which future courtroom-drama star was considered for Gunsmoke's Matt Dillon but judged too heavy?

Raymond Burr had the voice for the part, the first director recalled, but was simply too big for it. He became Perry Mason instead.

Only two of 119 golden-age television Westerns lasted over ten years: Gunsmoke and which other series?

Bonanza ran for 14 seasons on NBC, which makes the Cartwright family saga the second-longest-running Western on American network television.

Gunsmoke's leading man banned reporters from the set, so TV Guide dubbed him which film star "of Dodge City"?

Greta Garbo was the comparison because he shunned publicity as she had. Off camera he was far from stern: filming sometimes stopped because he could not stop giggling.

Gunsmoke's future leading man battled which giant creatures in the 1954 science-fiction film Them!?

Ants made gigantic by radiation nest in the New Mexico desert in Them!, and the hunt for their escaped queens ends in the storm drains of Los Angeles.

Buck Taylor, Gunsmoke's Newly O'Brien, appeared decades later as Emmett Walsh on which modern Western drama?

Yellowstone put him back in the saddle in his eighties. Away from acting he became a painter, and began selling his watercolors of horses and frontier life in 1993.

Gunsmoke takes place in and around Dodge City in the years following which American conflict?

The Civil War was about a decade past in the cattle-boom 1870s of the stories, which begin after the railroad reached Dodge City in 1872.

First-season Gunsmoke episodes opened with Matt Dillon musing over the dead in which Dodge City cemetery?

Boot Hill, like other frontier graveyards of that name, held men who had died violently, with their boots on. Matt opened each story walking among the headstones.

Which future film star played the runaway Packy on Gunsmoke in 1964 and a young farmer there a decade later?

Kurt Russell's Packy is a precocious boy escorted to Dodge by a wanted man on the run. His later character, Buck Henry, hunts the renegade uncle who killed his father.

Which star of The Waltons played the widow who falls for an amnesiac Matt Dillon in a 1973 Gunsmoke episode?

Michael Learned's rancher, known as Mike, came back in a 1990 television film to tell the retired Matt that their brief romance had left him with a daughter.

The 1990 television film Gunsmoke: The Last Apache is set just before the surrender of which Apache leader?

Geronimo surrendered in September 1886, so the film finds a long-retired Matt far from Dodge, riding through Arizona and Mexico to rescue a captive young woman.

Louie Pheeters, played by James Nusser on Gunsmoke through the 1960s, was best known around Dodge City as what?

The town drunk was more than a background joke: in one 1969 episode, bounty hunters hold Louie hostage alongside Kitty and Doc to get at Matt.

What major change did CBS make to Gunsmoke when its seventh season opened in September 1961?

CBS made episodes an hour long from the 1961 opener, Perce. After four straight seasons as the top-rated program, the longer show slipped to third.

A Dodge City college gave which honour to the actor who had played Gunsmoke's Doc Adams as the series ended?

An honorary doctorate made television's Doc a doctor at last. It came from St. Mary of the Plains College, in the town where the series was set but never filmed.

What did the Minneapolis-born actor cast as Gunsmoke's Matt Dillon change about his looks?

He dyed his blond hair darker for the part. The son of a father of Norwegian descent and a mother of German descent, he was naturally fair.

In Gunsmoke's very first television episode, how does Matt Dillon's showdown with a cocky gunslinger end?

The marshal is shot down and critically wounded in the very first story. The gunman runs unchecked in Dodge until the recovered lawman astonishes him by calling him out again.

A wound suffered at Anzio in 1944 left Gunsmoke's leading man with lifelong pain in which part of the body?

His right leg was hit so badly that it took several operations to repair, and climbing onto a horse on the set could bring the pain flaring back years later.

Which two-time Oscar-winning film star played a vengeful matriarch in the 1966 Gunsmoke episode The Jailer?

Bette Davis plays a mother out to punish Matt for the hanging of her husband six years earlier. TV Guide later ranked it 28th among the greatest episodes of all time.

CBS's chairman asked for a Western about which fictional detective "of the Old West", the request that led to Gunsmoke?

Philip Marlowe was a radio favourite of the chairman, and the executive handed the job had developed that very detective series for the network.

The only adult Western to reach television before Gunsmoke, by four days, dramatised which real lawman's life?

Wyatt Earp, played by Hugh O'Brian, reached ABC on September 6, 1955. Television historians date the adult Western from that week's two premieres.

Which future film director, famed for violent Westerns, wrote early Gunsmoke television scripts such as The Queue?

Sam Peckinpah sold scripts to several television Westerns in the 1950s, more than a decade before he made The Wild Bunch. One Gunsmoke script of his was rejected for its content.

Charles Marquis Warren, the first producer of television's Gunsmoke, went on to help create which other Western series?

Rawhide, with Eric Fleming and a young Clint Eastwood, became his next television success after he walked away from Gunsmoke midway through its second season.

When CBS dropped Gunsmoke, its Monday slot went to Phyllis and which other Mary Tyler Moore Show spin-off?

Rhoda, entering its second year, shared the slot with the brand-new Phyllis. Nobody had warned the Gunsmoke cast, who read about the cancellation in the trade papers.

Leonard Katzman, a producer of Gunsmoke's last five seasons, later became showrunner of which prime-time soap opera?

Dallas grew under him from self-contained stories into a serial, setting off the 1980s fashion for prime-time soaps. He had also produced the Gunsmoke spin-off Dirty Sally.

Which rival Western series sent up Gunsmoke's entire regular cast in a spoof episode titled Gun-Shy?

Maverick cast Ben Gage as Marshal Mort Dooley, a lampoon of Matt Dillon that he went on to repeat in three more episodes.

Several Gunsmoke regulars are honoured in the Hall of Great Western Performers at a museum located where?

Oklahoma City's Western heritage museum inducted Miss Kitty's actress in 1968, only the third performer it had chosen, after Tom Mix and Gary Cooper.

Whose wife, Babe, is credited with pressing CBS to reverse its 1967 decision to cancel Gunsmoke?

William Paley, the network's chief executive, was swayed by viewers' letters of protest and by his wife, whose favourite program it was. The reprieve returned Gunsmoke to the top ten.

For its first twelve seasons, Gunsmoke aired at 10 pm Eastern on which night of the week?

Saturday nights were its home until 1967, when a rescue move to Monday evenings sent it straight back into the top ten.

A fight scene from the 1958 Gunsmoke episode Buffalo Man is shown in many American college classes to teach what?

Film editing students study it because American Cinema Editors built an instructional short around the brawl between Matt and that week's guest star.

Which institution chose the Gunsmoke radio episode The Cabin for its National Recording Registry in 2019?

The Library of Congress keeps the registry for recordings it judges culturally, historically or aesthetically significant, and preserves each one it selects.

On Gunsmoke, the nickname of Dodge City saloon owner Miss Kitty was short for which given name?

Kathleen was her full first name, though the series billed her simply as Kitty through all nineteen of her seasons in Dodge.

Howard Culver, the marshal in a 1949 Gunsmoke radio audition, held which Dodge City job throughout the television run?

Hotel clerk Howie Uzzell was his consolation: a contract with another radio Western had barred him from taking the lead, and the project stalled for three years.

Sarah Selby's recurring Gunsmoke character Ma Smalley ran which kind of business in Dodge City?

A boarding house kept Ma Smalley in the stories for eleven years, from 1961 to 1972, one of a dozen or more townsfolk who recurred around the regulars.

Glenn Strange, Gunsmoke's bartender Sam Noonan, spoke which Native American language until about the age of 13?

Cherokee came from his father's side, but with nobody left to speak it with he had lost the language by the 1970s. He was also a descendant of Pocahontas.

Gunsmoke's Doc Adams actor turned down an appointment to which institution to join a stock theater company?

The Naval Academy lost him to the stage: he held a congressional appointment but chose an acting troupe, having made his debut in a tent show as a teenager.

Which president presented the American Cancer Society's Courage Award to Gunsmoke's Miss Kitty actress?

Ronald Reagan made the presentation in 1984. An operation had cured her oral cancer seven years earlier, and she had since toured the country raising funds for the society.

After Gunsmoke ended, its leading man played mountain man Zeb Macahan in which Western television saga?

How the West Was Won made him a cult figure across Europe, where it was rerun so often that it grew more popular than it had been at home.

In the 1987 reunion film Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge, the retired Matt Dillon is making his living as what?

A fur trapper when the film opens, he is stabbed by thieves who want his pelts and rifle, and drifts downriver in a canoe before a wagoner carries him back to town.

In Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge, Miss Kitty hurries back to Dodge City from where on hearing that Matt is dying?

New Orleans became her home when Matt retired. She tells a friend she never married him because she could not bear to keep seeing him carried in close to death.

Gunsmoke's final episode, a comic tale of Festus and a family's plow mule, carried which title?

The Sharecroppers was never meant as a farewell, since the cast had no idea the series was ending. Festus wounds a farmer's son and winds up plowing the family's fields himself.

In the 1949 audition recordings for radio's Gunsmoke, the marshal answered to which first name instead of Matt?

Mark Dillon was the hero of both auditions, which were recorded with two different actors. The name had changed by the time the series reached the air three years later.

Rex Koury's theme for Gunsmoke, first heard on the radio series, carries which title?

Old Trails was written for the radio series, where its composer also conducted the orchestra. The melody has lyrics, though they were never sung on the air.

Which 1971 two-part Gunsmoke story drew more viewer mail than any other and led to the spin-off Dirty Sally?

Pike is the wounded young outlaw nursed back to health by Sally Fergus, an old woman who gathers bottles and other cast-offs to sell.

Which actor played gunfighter Will Mannon in a 1969 Gunsmoke episode and again in the 1987 film Return to Dodge?

Steve Forrest's Mannon was one of the very few men ever to outdraw Matt, and he came back eighteen years on, straight out of prison and set on revenge.

Which Gunsmoke episode, filmed as the pilot on noticeably different sets, was held back to air 26th in the first season?

Hack Prine shows a jail with a rolltop desk and no stove, a longer saloon bar and a bartender never seen again. Its story has an old friend unknowingly hired to kill Matt.

Which actor, who had spoofed Gunsmoke in a high-school show, joined the series in 1965 as deputy Thad Greenwood?

Roger Ewing so impressed the producers in a guest part that they kept him on. He gave up acting in 1972 and became a professional photographer.